


kill the lights and look right at me

by ilaeth



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clubbing, Dirty Dancing, Drinking, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Kissing, First Meetings, Fluff, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mid-life Crisis, Morning After, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24335311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilaeth/pseuds/ilaeth
Summary: He mustn’t look. He knows if he looks back over to the stage the singer will meet his eyes like he had done all those months ago. Temptation to just flick his eyes across the low expanse of the room to where the singer, dolled up in faux fur and tight leather, is strong; and Yuuri wouldn’t even be the only one staring. Half the occupants inside the bar have their eyes on the lone man on stage, enamoured by the soft croon of his voice and the fingers pleated around the neck of the microphone. Why wouldn’t they? He’s a vision, and one Yuuri has dreamt of on numerous occasions over the last year. He can spot a handful of women and men sat near the lip of the stage who look like they could’ve stepped out of a Vogue magazine, but for some reason beyond Yuuri’s understanding it’s him who’s being looked at in return.It was moreso the pure unattainability, he thinks, that had made the stranger all the more attractive. Yuuri knows he’s punching up. “A man can dream,” he murmurs, back turned to the stage and head tipped down to the grain of wood on the bar.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	kill the lights and look right at me

**Author's Note:**

> this has not been beta'd! any and all comments are appreciated!  
> title taken from "kill the lights" by alex newell.

Yuuri stares in agony at his glass of whiskey on the bartop.

He mustn’t look. He  _ knows _ if he looks back over to the stage the singer will meet his eyes like he had done all those months ago. Temptation to just flick his eyes across the low expanse of the room to where the singer, dolled up in faux fur and tight leather, is strong; and Yuuri wouldn’t even be the only one staring. Half the occupants inside the bar have their eyes on the lone man on stage, enamoured by the soft croon of his voice and the fingers pleated around the neck of the microphone. Why wouldn’t they? He’s a vision, and one Yuuri has daydreamt of over the last year. He can spot a handful of women and men sat near the lip of the stage who look like they could’ve stepped out of a Vogue magazine, but for some reason beyond Yuuri’s understanding it’s  _ him _ who’s being looked at in return.

Maybe the singer is weary. He probably thinks Yuuri is some pervert, tucked in at the far end of the bar, sweaty and stiff. What smoke lingers in the air obscures his vision a little but Yuuri thinks that he’d be able to see that piercing blue even through the thickest of fog. 

But Yuuri is a weak man, and in a moment of heightened bravery he looks, barely shifting, to better admire the view on stage.

Again, he’s being looked at. Yuuri doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s out of pity, and that he’s finally getting the attention he’s been hoping for for the last thirty years, but for all the wrong reasons. Where the singer sits on the stool, long legs crossed at the ankle, fingers pleated around the neck of the microphone, his head tilts towards Yuuri’s direction. He bites his lip, shifts back to face the bar, and tosses back the last drop in the glass. 

Yuuri still isn’t acclimatised to the bitter winds of St. Petersburg. He should be sitting in the garden on a deck chair nursing a margarita. It’s cherry blossom season, and for someone like Yuuri who burns when the weather jumps just over twenty five, it’s his favourite time of the year. He’d booked off holidays, too,  _ just _ so he could live out the fantasy in his new apartment a few blocks from the onsen. He’d even bought himself a wireless radio so he could lounge in the sun and keep up to date without stretching the kitchen’s one to the patio doors.

Miserably, he looks to the blustering winds outside and orders another whiskey. Marketing a new type of computer safety software to a company in Russia was  _ not _ how he intended his Spring to go.

Russia had been nicer in the summer. Less than a year ago Yuuri had travelled with Phichit for a seminar at Saint Petersburg State University, and through mere time and place convenience they’d stumbled across the bar tucked in the back streets of the city. Yuuri had walked in while the band on stage was switching over with the same singer he sees tonight, and while they both got shitfaced he couldn’t take his eyes from the sight across the room. It’s very rare that he finds himself completely enthralled by another human being but there was something so fascinating about the way the singer hummed into the microphone that he found his attention drifting further from the bar and closer to the stage, like a sailor being lured to their doom by a siren. 

_ And doom is the right word _ , he thinks now, just under a year later,  _ because thinking I could even hope for someone like that will prove disappointing in the end _ . The singer is still long legs, sharp joints and smooth, milky skin. Yuuri doesn’t even know his  _ name _ , for crying out loud, but he’s been pining for the past eight months over the memory of someone he simply couldn’t forget. 

It was moreso the pure unattainability, he thinks, that had made the stranger all the more attractive. Yuuri knows he’s punching up. “A man can dream,” he murmurs, back turned to the stage and head tipped down to the grain of wood on the bar.

The songs blend as his attention veers. Yuuri finishes his third whiskey halfway through a Russian rendition of a Donna Summer song and orders his fourth.  _ Miserable _ , Yuuri thinks.  _ I must look miserable to all these locals. Jesus. No wonder I’m getting funny looks. _

The voice fades out to the strum of an acoustic guitar. Yuuri drags his glass across the grain of the bar and watches the condensation draw patterns. Outside the wind blusters and rattles the windows. He’s suddenly glad for quitting his job mid-way through a presentation because at least now he can stay inside to drink and not have to mingle with businessmen that treat him like a dumb foreigner. It’s a nice alternative. At least he has that.

“You’re familiar with St. Petersburg, aren’t you?”

The whiskey snorts out his nostrils. Yuuri fumbles for a napkin, wiping the spill and his face, heart lunging up to his throat. _ Oh god, _ Yuuri agonises.  _ Please don’t do this to me. I don’t deserve this _ . He knows he must reek of alcohol and sweat. He can feel his glasses slip down his nose.

Yuuri peers up over the crooked frames of his glasses to meet terrifyingly blue eyes. Where the stranger leans against the bar the light catches the silver of his hair and the sharp jut of his cheekbones _. God help me _ . “Yesーuh, I am. How did you know?”

“I  _ knew _ it was you!” Delight blossoms on his face. His grin stretches, and Yuuri thinks it forms something of a heart-shaped smile. “I didn’t think I had mistaken you when you walked in. A good memory like mine doesn’t miss an awful tie like that.” A pause. He gestures, as if to say  _ on the other hand _ . “You’re also very cute. Now, don’t make it out that you weren’t ogling, because I saw you. What’s your name? I’m Victor.”

Victor. Finally, a name to the face. The moment is soured by the stampede of questions and remarks Yuuri is trying very hard to process. He feels like he’s drowning in a lake and Victor is standing on the docks, grinning, waving him goodbye. “Yuuri,” he blurts. “Katsuki, Yuuri.”

“How’d you spell it?”

“Uhーwhich part?”

“The  _ Yuuri. _ I have a step brother called Yuri, is all, and I don’t think he’d be very happy to know he has competition over his name.” Victor bats his eyelashes. “One  _ u? _ Two?”

“Oh, uhー” Yuuri trips over his own words. He wants to cry with embarrassment. He knows his suit is two sizes two big, and that he must look like a bumbling schoolgirl, but there’s no fixing that. He’s just going to have to suffer through the mortification. “Two  _ u’ _ s.” With desperation he reaches over for the glass of whiskey a few inches away. It does little to conceal the flush on his cheeks, but it’s better than nothing, and if Victor is so persistent on speaking Yuuri won’t let himself do it while sober. He draws the rest of the drink down his throat in one quick sip.

“ _ Yuuri _ . I see. Yuuri, come dance with me.”

“Pardon?” The whiskey burns his throat like a thousand suns. He sets the glass down, flabbergasted by how forward Victor is. It’s not a surprise that Victor _ is _ forward, per say, but more so that it’s being directed at him. Yuuri is still reeling from being approached in the first place. He hasn’t had the chance to digest being prepositioned to dance. “Dance? No, no. I’m not a dancer.”

“Not a dancer?” Victor’s brow quirks. “Oh, I beg to differ.”

Yuuri wants to ask _ what’s that supposed to mean?  _ but before he can get a word in there’s a hand against his. It’s cool and smooth and Yuuri can’t breathe. He knows he must look a scene with someone as devilishly handsome as Victor; sweaty in his oversized suit and flushed from the heat of the bar. Yuuri thinks he probably looks close to a charity case more than a bystander. Victor guides him up off of his seat and flashes an electric grin. “Come on. It’s easier to talk when you move.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m not a dancer.” He stands, anyway, because he’s weak and the alcohol he’s been drinking over the past half an hour decides now is a perfect time to rush to his head. 

“Right. And I’m a graduate in neurology.” Victor takes Yuuri’s other hand with his free one, facing him chest to chest. He’s smiling like he’s delighted with the news that the man he insists on dancing with doesn’t have two left feet. “Which, by the way, I almost was.”

There’s no time to question anything else. Yuuri feels himself being tugged forward into the throng of the club, glasses falling skewed on his nose, as the crowd swallows him whole.

Victor spins, the fur jacket pooling around his shoulders reflecting the colour of the strobe. It looks like warm honey in the overhead light. “So,” he begins, voice loud over the music but perfectly intelligible. “What do you do, Mr. Salaryman?”

Yuuri blinks. He’s surprised when the adrenaline coursing through his veins drives him forward to speak past the tight confines of his throat, unprovoked and unintended. “I don’t!” he replies, matching the volume of Victor’s voice. “I quit my job!”

“You quit?” he echoes, brow quirking. One hand slides from Yuuri’s to cup his waist, guiding them into synch.

“A few hours ago!” The alcohol does a brilliant job at making the words come without much thought put past behind them. Yuuri can feel himself slurring but can’t hear it over the music. He doesn’t want to imagine how he must sound. “I had had enough of being pushed around, so I walked out of the presentation and hopped into a taxi!”

“Wow!” Victor’s face breaks out into a grin. “That’s quite rebellious, you know?”

He digests Victor’s words and supposes what he’d done  _ had _ been relatively risque. When Yuuri closes his eyes he can still picture the faces of the sister company’s executives staring right back at him as he stops mid Power Point to lay down his notes, straighten his suit, and march out the doorway to the streets below. Their smirks as he fumbled over Russian pronunciation had been the final straw to break the camel’s back, and even  _ if _ he’s now currently unemployed, it doesn’t seem as bad with the weight of Victor’s hands on his hips. 

“I suppose it is,” Yuuri agrees, eyes trained on the way Victor’s lips move when he speaks. “What about you? What do  _ you _ do?”

“A good man never kisses and tells,” he toys, smile quirking into a smirk. “It adds to my mystique to keep people wondering.”

Yuuri’s eyes roll. It seems to spur Victor on, because he looks delighted at the sight. “You already said something about neuropathyーor  _ something. _ And you sing.”

Completely deaf to his prior words Victor says: “For now I’m just a freelance writer and singer. Science was never my forte.”

“You must be pretty good to get into med school, though.”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “With a little money people are willing to leave wiggle room.  _ Besides _ , scrubs are only attractive on people that are good at their job.”

“I don’t know. I think you’d look pretty in white and blue.”

“Pretty?” An airy laugh escapes Victor’s lips. “Can’t say I’ve been called pretty before?”

“Really?” Yuuri’s lips pull into a pout. With the added weight of whiskey in his bloodstream he surges forward to slide his hands down to the curve of Victor’s hips, moving with more confidence to the beat of the song. In return Victor’s hand slides up to hold Yuuri by the base of his tie, playing with it idly. “Well, you should be. You’re one of the prettiest people I’ve ever seen in my entire life, swear down.”

A delighted flush spreads across the high points of Victor’s cheeks. “The feeling is reciprocated.”

Yuuri’s grin quirks at that. Noticeably less sober than Victor his hands slip lower on his jeans and he walks them backwards into the heart of the crowd. With Victor pleasantly buzzed and Yuuri on his way to being drunk he proposes: “Let’s dance.” Victor gives his tie a little tug, and with a wink, leads him forward as the base of the song picks up.

* * *

Yuuri bursts through the fire exit doors with a bout of raucous laughter. He spins on his heels, walking backwards into the back garden of the bar, cheeks straining with his smile. Victor follows, flushed and delighted, the door falling shut behind him. He reaches up to gently adjust the glasses on Yuuri’s nose. Yuuri tugs them off fully, his vision blurry but suddenly feeling like he’s a bird with its wings unclipped; wild and free. 

“Can you see?” Victor asks, laugh puffing into a white cloud in the evening’s chill.

His figure swims in front of Yuuri. He reaches out with tingling fingers to hold him by the jaw and guide him down into a kiss.

Victor relents for a moment before pulling back, eyes twinkling with delight. “You’re very drunk.”

“I know.” Yuuri exhales, fingers sliding down to cup either side of Victor’s neck. “Kiss me.”

“You’re very drunk,” he repeats, though with different meaning this time. He gives Yuuri a gentle peck, to which he chases with his mouth, before raising his head to look at the moon above. Yuuri presses a trail of kisses up the pale column of his throat as they stumble towards the outer wall of the bar. His fingers hook into the belt loops of Victor’s trousers, who lets out a grunt of surprise at the force that propels him backwards. “Oof. Careful, I’m an old man.”

“Good. I like silver foxes. Kiss  _ meeeee _ , Victor.” 

Victor barks his laughter. He steadies Yuuri, entertained by his quick wit and taste in men. “You can’t say my name like that. It isn’t fair.”

“Victor. Victor, Victor,  _ Victor.” _

With a sigh of dramaticized exhaustion he leans down to press their lips together. Victor, considerably more sober than Yuuri, guides them into a gentle pace and breaks off when he notices people staring. “Now,” he chides, stern without much bite, “I think it’s time for you to go back to your hotel.”

“No,” Yuuri whines. He clings tighter. Everything feels weightless. He feels like he could drift off the face of the Earth if he wasn’t being held down by Victor right now. “Take me back to yours.”

“That would be very ungentlemanly of me.”

“Big word.”

“Honest word,” Victor corrects. He reaches down into his coat pocket and rummages around until his keys jingle against his fingers. Lazily, through the fabric, he unlocks the car door and guides Yuuri over to the black car parked in the employees lot, stopping every now and again to steady him. “I’ll drive you back to your hotel, alright? Don’t worry, I haven’t drank much.”

With delicacy he opens the door and sets Yuuri down on the passenger side. As he leans over to buckle him in Yuuri just catches the faintest scent of his aftershave and lets out a sigh of contentment. He clicks in the belt before closing the door, rounding the car, and slipping in the driver’s side. Yuuri stares, fascinated, at his face. “If you feel like you’re going to be sick, crank open the window.”

Yuuri leans back in his seat, nods, but otherwise stays glued to Victor’s expression. “Take me home,” he asks, again, constenance-heavy and slurring with the weight of his tongue. “Fuck me on your sofa.”

“Whoa,” Victor chokes a cough. He turns into his shoulder, grinning where Yuuri can’t see it, before starting up the car. With effort he retains a fairly neutral expression, which only works given Yuuri’s intoxication. Victor never has been the best actor, after all. “I  _ really _ think it’s time we got you home. What’s your address?”

“ _ Please, _ Victor.”

He checks the rearview mirror before pulling off into the road and driving forward. “I’m going to leave you on the side of the road otherwise.”

“ _ Noooo…” _

“Mhm. I will. No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

A sigh. Yuuri reaches down into his pocket to pull out his wallet. He flips it open and squints aimlessly. “I can’t read,” he announces, trying to make out the words that slide in between and out of double vision. Russian is difficult on a good day. Yuuri doesn’t think he’d be able to read English if he was asked to.

The vibration of the engine’s pur does wonders to the headache forming at the base of his skill. He tilts his head to the window’s glass and watches Victor’s gaze flick to the hotel keycard, then back to the road ahead. Like a rug pulled from under his feet Yuuri finds himself beyond half-asleep, slipping in and out of consciousness as they pass over a pothole or a grate. St. Petersburg fades in and out of his vision outside the window, and suddenly all he wants to do is sleep. Yuuri registers Victor’s voice calling out his name but is helpless to do anything but drop off to sleep, head lolled against the car’s door.

* * *

When he wakes it’s to the smell of something sweet, the taste of bile on his tongue, and the sound of garbled words somewhere near to him. There’s a calm moment of serenity where he lets the pillows beneath him shift with his weight, for the sun filtering through the windows hit him just right where his lower back peeks underneath his shirt, before the wrath of a thousand suns unleashes itself. Yuuri’s hit with an onslaught of threatening sensations that would’ve floored him had he not already been laying down. He thinks he’s busted his knee, his palms sting, and with the way his head hurts he thinks he could be concussed. That, or a typical hangover in his terms. 

As he comes to he realises that the fabric softener he smells on the cushions isn’t the brand he uses. It takes another moment to register that he’s in Japan, and it’s not the brand the hotel uses, either.

“Oh, my god. He’s up.”

Yuuri squints at the voice. He rolls over on what he’s discovered is a couch to lie on his other side, just shy of falling off onto hardwood flooring, and comes face-to-face with what looks to be an angry paperboy. His face is screwed up like he’s just sucked a lemon and he’s got his arms crossed over his chest like he’s ready to give Yuuri a very stern telling off, despite looking half his age.

“Jesus,” the boy grumbles. He’s now taken to tapping his foot on the floor, waiting for Yuuri to answer to his shortcomings. “You’re a state, aren’t you?”

“Erm,” Yuuri reaches up to rub at his eyes to try and clear the blurriness of his vision. He doesn’t even know where his glasses are. “Sorry. Where am I?”

“‘ _ Where am _ ー’” he repeats scathingly, cutting himself off to bark out behind his shoulder into the doorway of what Yuuri assumes is the kitchen, “Vitya!”

From the doorway pops a smiling face dusted in flour, silver hair held back with a bandana. Something lodges in Yuuri’s throat at the expression; the heart-shaped smile, the softness of his eyes, and suddenly the memories come back like a tidal-wave. He grips his forehead with an agonised groan as Victor waltzes in, apron tied around his front to match the bandana, to the sofa. “Yuuri! My Yuuri, you’re awake! I do apologise for the rude awakening. I hadn’t expected Yuratchka to rouse you.”

“He’s freeloading,” the boy, who Yuuri assumed to be the named  _ Yuratchka _ , gestures wildly to Yuuri. “Kick him out, Victor!”

“What? No.” Victor reaches down to hold a puzzled Yuuri between his palms. He presses a kiss to his hairline before rising, fists poised on his hips. Yuuri is still reeling from being woken up, let alone the kiss. “Breakfast! Look, now you’ve distracted me, and the pancakes will be burning.”

“No I never!”

“You  _ did. _ Go check on them. Leave me to wake  _ our guest. _ ”

“ _ Our _ guest? I don’t think I agreed on this!”

“Well, you don’t live with me, so you get no say. I only included you so you wouldn’t pout about it.” Yuratchka does just that, huffing out an offended breath through his nose. Victor shoos him off. “Hurry along, or they’ll burn, and you’ll be stuck with unbranded cornflakes before Yakov takes you back home.”

Yuuri watches him scurry back where Victor emerged from with blurry eyes. Victor does, too, but turns to Yuuri once they’re safely alone. “Here,” he says, reaching out to the coffee table to pick something up, holding it out for Yuuri. “I think you might need these.”

“Oh.” Yuuri takes the pair of glasses from Victor’s floured fingers and gently unfolds the arms. They slip on easy enough and suddenly the room comes into clarity; the wooden book-cases, tv mounted on the wall, and tall windows. Yuuri pushes himself to sit, steadying only once as the ground beneath his feet tips, before sitting back against the couch. “I’m sorry if this seems rude, but...where exactly am I?”

“Where are you?” Victor echoes. “Oh! Of course! Yes, you’re at my apartment. Last night we both had a couple of drinks, and I handled mine very well. You wereーerm, drunk, we could say? Very drunk. Very  _ very _ drunk. I thought you’d been drugged or something, because you wouldn’t wake up, and when I tried to carry you into the lobby they wouldn’t let me in because they thought I’d kidnapped you, or something. Don’t worryーI promise I didn’t do anything funny to you.”

Yuuri considers him with a steady gaze. He doesn’t  _ feel _ like he’s aching in any funny places. Beside the stiffness in his glutes from the dancing he feels like normal after a night of one too many, and the open-ness of Victor’s expression leads him to believe he’s telling the truth.

It’s the first time he’s seeing Victor in broad daylight instead of dusky bar lighting. Beneath the veil of smoke and alcohol he looked like something wholly untouchable; thoroughly out of Yuuri, and anyone in the room’s league, but like this he looks infinitely more human. There’s some acne scarring on his cheeks and he’s got slight wrinkles in his forehead, and when his smile relaxes the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes don’t quite go away but it’s so much more charming than Yuuri had even expected. “I believe you,” Yuuri tells him, and that heart-shaped smile is back. It’s the finishing blow. Yuuri feels the  _ thunk _ of cupid’s arrow shoot through his back and pierce his heart. “Though, it doesn’t do much to help my predicament.”

“How so?”

Yuuri’s mouth twists. He glances up to the clock on the wall opposite and frowns. “Well, usually I’d be waking up by now to attend a meeting for a company I no longer work for. Which is fine, believe me, but all hotel fees are covered  _ by _ said company, for the next week.”

Victor nods. He seems genuinely concerned, which does something to ease the worries Yuuri has. “Was it the company you used to work for?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Wait, sorry. What?”

“The company you used to work for…?” Victor repeats. His face creases in worry before it relaxes. His eyebrows raise a fraction, mouth dropping open an inch. “Do you not remember?” He blinks. “Oh. Oh, Yuratchka, he doesn’t even remember!”

“Be quiet, old man!”

“Remember what?” Yuuri echoes. A frown pulls low on his face. “What am I missing here?”

“That you and I have met before?” Dread pools in Yuuri’s stomach. He suddenly feels far less concerned about the fact that he hasn’t showered in over twenty four hours, but more so by the newfound information that this isn’t the first time he’s met Victor, let alone had a conversation with him. “You were  _ very _ drunk, as was your friend, so it’s not  _ really _ a surprise.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri interjects, wholly lost and hardly apologetic, “but I’m a little lost here. This is our first time meeting.”

“Last summer? When you came up on the stage to dance and sing with me?” 

“That was  _ you? _ ”

A laugh. “Yes! I never got to catch your name before you had to go.”

A nauseating pulse of recognition thrums through Yuuri. He remembers dancing the night away with Phichit and a faceless stranger he couldn’t remember due to the sheer quantity of alcohol in his system. After the adrenaline passed and the alcohol took its toll he remembers vaguely being ushered home by Phichit, but everything other than that is a blur. To realize the missing puzzle piece of his night was Victor all along is simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.

“God, I’m so sorry.”   


“Sorry?” He laughs. “What are you sorry for? You are a delight, Yuuri Katsuki.”   


“I’m a mess.” Yuuri drops his head to his hands with an agonised groan. From behind Victor the blonde boy reappears, unsympathetic and equally as floured as Victor, with a bowl in his hand and a scowl on his face. He watches as Victor leans over to comb Yuuri’s hair from his face, raising it back up to meet his gaze. “I really am sorry for all of this. I must have looked really rude to you last night when I didn’t recognize you. Oh,  _ Jesus _ , this is mortifying.”

“It’s fine. Honestly! Stop apologising.” He straightens out Yuuri’s glasses before rising and offering a hand. “Come on, I’ll fill in the blanks for you over breakfast. Yuri made pancakes.”

Yuri, who Yuuri assumes is the nicknamed  _ Yurotchka,  _ huffs from behind Victor’s back. He straightens his posture and announces: “You better like these. If you don’t then you’re wrong.”

They are good, Yuuri realises, seated at the tiny cramped table in Victor’s kitchenette. He puts another on his plate and drowns it in syrup before stuffing his cheeks, thankful for the greasy food to ease his poast-hangover stomach. Yuuri raises his mug of tea to his lips as his feet knock Victor’s beneath the table, ankles linked. It’s bright and airy from the snowfall reflecting light from the streets into the apartment, and even despite feeling grubby from a night spent dancing, Yuuri is content. To his side sits a sleepy Makkachin, sunbathing beneath the sink’s cabinet in the sun’s direct trajectory. Yuuri watches her with fondness he holds for most people’s pets and finds that this is one of the best mornings he’s had in a while.

“Hey,” Victor begins, swallowing his mouthful, “seeing as you are now, and officially, ‘jobless’, how about I show you around St. Petersburg?”

Yuuri looks back up to Victor, who does his best at appearing neutral, but still manages to look eager even without a reponse. His eyes flit across the table to Yuri, who looks marginally less pissed off at Yuuri’s company now in comparison to earlier, then back to Victor. 

_ Fuck it _ , he thinks,  _ I was planning on spending this week as holidays anyway.  _ He swallows and blurts out a delighted: “I’d like that.”

Victor beams. His feet bump against Yuuri’s beneath the table and Yuuri realises that he’s made the right decision when the expression of elation Victor wears so well sends butterflies to his tummy. He finds himself quirking a smile, flush busting the tips of his ears, as the sun rises higher into the sky above St. Petersburg and melts the snow below.

**Author's Note:**

> "llaeth, when will you stop writing your favourite characters in leather and fur costumes?" good question.


End file.
